Ms O'Loughlin will particularly focus on how the video was broadcast on the day of the attack.

The regulator has also requested "urgent meetings" with free-to-air lobby group Free TV and the Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association to review the current rules.

"The ACMA’s investigation will focus on any content of the perpetrator-filmed, live-streamed footage of the shootings that was broadcast on Australian television," a statement provided by the media regulator said.

"The ACMA is also concerned about content made available or linked to on broadcasters’ websites."

ACMA regulates broadcast content not online content but the organisation said it was in "close contact" with the Australian Press Council to review members' coverage of the attack.

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A Press Council spokeswoman said it had received "at least one complaint" about the use of footage and images related to the Christchurch events. The Press Council's members include organisations such as News Corp Australia, Nine Entertainment Co (the owner of this masthead) and Daily Mail Australia.

Its rules require member publications to "take reasonable steps to avoid causing or contributing materially to substantial offence, distress or prejudice, or substantial risk to health or safety, unless doing so is sufficiently in the public interest".

A Nine spokesman said the network "will show the vision, but only if it is relevant to the unfolding story" and "will not, and have not, shown anything of a graphic nature". The network aired edited footage from the gunman's livestream on Friday and over the weekend.

Seven West Media used two brief shots of the footage in its news coverage on Sunday evening, and Sunrise ran a clip of this on Monday morning with a portion of the edited vision; the network has now stopped using the footage. Sources close to Seven deny this is due to the sensitivity of the footage rather because the news cycle has moved on.

A Network Ten spokeswoman said: “Like all media, Ten ran small and considered snippets of footage in its breaking news coverage as the incident unfolded. As the news cycle progressed over the days, our coverage focused on developments following the incident.

“At no point did any Ten news asset ever use vision from inside the mosque.”

News Corp's Sky News chief executive Paul Whittaker on Sunday released a statement saying Sky News Live stopped running any vision from the video after early on Saturday morning. The network did not continue its live news feed from New Zealand and replaced it with sport, which Mr Whittaker said was to avoid impacting any investigations or outcomes.

"On Friday, in line with other Australian broadcasters, we ran heavily-edited and carefully selected video that featured no vision from inside the mosque, no shootings and no victims. At no stage did we feature the live vision," he said.

Social media sites continue to face global scrutiny - in particular Facebook where the livestream was originally broadcast - and were still trying to stop copies of the video from circulating on Monday.

Facebook has adopted a policy of blocking all footage from the livestream from being circulated on its platform and has removed millions of shared copies.

However, Google is allowing non-violent footage from the livestream to be used when it is deemed newsworthy. The search giant has human reviewers moderating the uploads including on its video platform YouTube.

Twitter is blocking and pulling down footage that breaks its community standards rules (such as including images of violence or guns heading up to violence) but has not imposed an outright ban. Any images or videos of the manifesto are being removed.